“I hope you will write me a little every day, Hazel,” her mother said. “It will be good practice for you. Mail the letters once or twice a week, but write a little every day.” “It will be like a diary,” said Hazel. “Yes, dear.” “And you’ll write often to me, Mother, won’t you?” “I’ll write often, but you will write without waiting for an answer. That will be your gift to me.” The days were so full that Hazel had not much time to think of the Southland to which she was going; but at odd minutes she questioned what it might be like. She had traveled no further from Boston than neighboring seashore resorts, and until her father’s death she had seen little of any but refined people, white or colored. “Charity,” she said, Friday night, “I’ve been saying good-bye to the McGinnis’s baby. He is so dear and dimpled and rosy. Are there many white babies South?” “Sure,” answered Charity. “But don’t you have nothing to do with white folks. There’s two kinds of white folks down there: those that hates you and those that calls you ‘a cute little nigger.’ My mother says that ain’t so, for she knows the first families of Virginia, but I ain’t acquainted with ’em.” “My father used to tell about white people near his home who were nice,” said Hazel reflectively. “Poor white trash, I guess. There ain’t any first families in Alabama.” That night, before they went to bed, Hazel questioned her mother about the white folks. “Won’t they like me?” she said. “Will they call out ‘Nigger,’ the way the boys on Shawmut Avenue do to Charity?” “I don’t know, dear, I don’t know. Granny can help you about that, not I. But I would not bother with them, Hazel. They go their way and you go yours. On the steamer, in the train, at the church and at school--everywhere you will be separated. Their world will not be your world. Leave them alone.” “I will remember,” Hazel said softly. The kind world that she had known seemed slipping away from her. She held her mother’s hand tight. “I will be with the colored people,” she said, “and I will love Granny.” “And when night comes, Hazel, remember we shall both be saying our prayers to the same Father in Heaven. I shall ask him to bless you.” “And I to bless you, Mother dear.” “And when I look at the stars at night I shall know that the same stars shine on you, only you will see the huge heavens and I shall only see a piece from my city window.” “And the stars shine on Father, too,” said Hazel. “I think he sees the stars.” With this thought she went to bed and, after a little, fell asleep, but her mother lay awake the night long. The last present came as they stood on the steamer. Mr. Perkins brought it to her and demanded and received six hugs in thanks. It was a soft woolen coat, blue outside and red within, finer than anything Hazel had ever owned.